By Biff Chaplow | Executive Director
EEqual’s Chapter program is an afterschool program that provides a space for passionate high-school-aged youth to learn, grow, and take action in their schools and communities. EEqual believes that youth should be at the center of their movements, so all Chapters are youth-led. Young people are often not given leadership opportunities, closing them out of participation in meaningful social justice work. EEqual Chapters engage youth in social justice education with a class-based approach, focusing on the issue of student homelessness. Learning is paired with actual projects that youth lead in their local communities. Currently, there is a lack of infrastructure that supports youth leadership development on social justice issues.
EEqual follows a community debrief model where we periodically gather to examine our impact and plan for the future. We focus on quantitative data. How many people are participating in our programs? What is the level of participation? How many chapters do we have? We also focus on qualitative data. What service projects are youth engaging in? How are they describing their needs and experiences? What is the feedback from the school and community? We combine all of this to evaluate our work. Staff at all levels participate in evaluation and planning.
Over the past year, EEqual has established 7 NEW chapters in communities across the US. Our team has been busy at work developing the curriculum. We send out quarterly curriculum sheets for Chapters to review and learn at their weekly meetings. Some examples of the Chapter curriculum are attached to this report!
A great example of an EEqual Chapter is one led by Riana, a student in Palm Beach, Florida. Riana saw an EEqual Chapter recruitment flyer and contacted us. After learning about our Chapter program, they reached out to their school and found an adult sponsor. They have recruited an additional 19 chapter members! This means 20 students will be working to support their local homeless community through projects and partnerships over the next year!
Last week we created a webinar for our Chapter members about College search, appication, and financing, You can see the webinar here.
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